Neo, Geo, GIS and Innovation

July 28, 2009 32 Comments

So every couple weeks, we get the neo is moving on up post.  My good friend Peter Batty wrote one titled, “How “neogeography” is rapidly moving into the “GIS” space“.

At several conferences I have attended recently – Where 2.0, WhereCamp and State of the Map (SOTM) – I have been struck by the amount of activity and innovation in areas that would have previously been regarded as firmly in the domain of “traditional GIS”. I’ll mention three: cartography, data creation and analysis.

So after reading his post, Peter and I shared some tweets back and forth and it became clear 140 characters is not enough.  Good thing I still blog.

So lets look at the basis of what Peter and many others are saying about “Neo”.  Peter is right in calling out Stamen Design as an innovator in our space (and many others).  But I disagree with his assessment that they are doing anything that is particularly neo.  What Stamen does is just incredible and really changes how web graphics are presented.  But I don’t think it really matters if they are Neo or not.  Their work stands on its own without having to put labels on it.  Oh sure they use OSM, Mapnik and many other Web 2.0 technologies, but that doesn’t make them Neo.  I also don’t buy the argument some make that if you are innovative, you must be neo.  Innovation is something that transcends a label.

Am I neo because I run Mapnik at the same time I’m paleo because I run ArcGIS Desktop?  Stamen, OSM and GeoCommons are all important because they innovate, not because they put a label on their shirts. In the end what is important is companies that innovate should be rewarded.  But I don’t think just because you use one piece of software or another should you be limited in your ability to take part in the revolution.

Peter’s underlying message is that you can be innovative without spending money tens of thousands of dollars.  That is a huge point to make about this “revolution”.  Being able to pick and choose platforms to develop on is a huge departure from the silos and stacks that we’ve been dealing with for years.  Heck, I wouldn’t have joined WeoGeo unless I didn’t believe things were changing for the better.

Viva La Revolución

Viva La Revolución

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Missed the Geospatial PDF eSeminar?

July 27, 2009 4 Comments

Well lucky you, you can still watch it here.

The GeoMonkey luv

GEOMONKEY LOVEZ TEH GEOSPATIAL PDF

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Safe Software posts all videos from the 2009 FME UC

July 24, 2009 4 Comments

Safe Software just opened up all the videos from the 2009 FME UC.  If you didn’t go and want to see what the fuss is all about, now is your chance.

We hope you enjoy the beer, oh, like I mean the videos, eh.

We hope you enjoy the beer, oh, like I mean the videos, eh.

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WeoGeo at the 2009 ESRI User Conference

July 21, 2009 8 Comments

Well my first day at WeoGeo actually was the first day of the ESRI UC.  Nothing like starting out at the most important GIS conference of the year.  My first day at WeoGeo also corresponded with WeoGeo’s first time at the ESRI UC itself.

The WeoGeo booth at the ESRI 2009 UC

The WeoGeo booth at the ESRI 2009 UC

There has been much written up about the conference, but I thought I’d hit on some of the things that came up at the booth listening to people talk about problems they are having with content management. Read more of this post

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ESRI’s MapIt vs MapDotNet vs IDV Solutions

July 20, 2009 21 Comments

A couple people asked me at the ESRI UC what I thought about the ESRI MapIt announcement and how it related to MapDotNet and IDV Solutions products.   Both MapDotNet and IDV Solutions have great products and really impressive support teams so don’t expect either to just disappear anytime soon (if at all).  One thing is for sure though, MapIt is like no other ESRI product before it on how it is sold, supported and how agile the development team is.  I suspect we’ll be seeing more ESRI MapIt type products from ESRI (smaller more nimble development teams like ArcGIS Explorer and the API teams) in the coming year.

From a user standpoint, Microsoft seems to favor ESRI’s product (though one could say they were at the ESRI UC so we’ll have to see how Microsoft plays MapIt moving forward).  Enterprise customers seem to prefer ESRI, but MapIt isn’t aimed at them (I can’t tell you how many times I heard ESRI say that I didn’t need MapIt because I already had everything I needed; ArcGIS Server).  Thus this is a play for the market outside their traditional space and one that is possibly very disruptive if they can pull it off.  At the very least, MapDotNet says bring it on!

So we are starting to see the Microsoft stack get very spatial.

SQL Server 2008 Spatial + SharePoint + Silverlight = GIS

The only thing this can result in is better development tools for programmers and thus better tools for users.

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Geospatial and Mapping eSeminar

July 20, 2009 3 Comments

An interesting Webinar takes place this Wednesday at 10am PDT.  The AdobeUsers.com GeospatialPDF Webinar covers:

  • How GIS professionals can create full-featured map layouts with attributes, labels and layers in ESRI’s ArcMap and use TerraGo Publisher to export them to a geo-registered, portable PDF
  • How to use PDF maps in the field, including querying the spatial data (e.g., find coordinates of a location or accurately measure distance, perimeter and area) and creating spatially intelligent markup using the tools in Acrobat 9
  • How GIS staff in the office can roll field markups within a PDF map back into the enterprise quickly and efficiently

It sounds like a good overview of using PDF to share spatial data and maps.  Definitely worth the time.

Even Ben Franklin was interested in getting the message out to the old world about geospatial PDFs.

Even Ben Franklin was interested in getting the message out to the old world about geospatial PDFs.

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GeoWeb 2009 is Around the Corner

July 20, 2009 Leave a Comment

Ron Lake sets the tone of the 2009 GeoWeb Conference and it isn’t upbeat.

Wither the world.  It is hard at times not to be pessimistic.  The world, our world, is admittedly finite. The illusion of expansion and of conquering frontiers, a hangover from the European expansion (the great reconnaissance) and their subsequent temporary dominance of the world, made us think otherwise, but only for a time.  There are no more hidden worlds to discover and no more frontiers to conquer.  The economy of the West, meaning that of the United States and Europe, seems to be in inevitable decline.  The power and influence of the BRIC countries and the GCC seems to be on an inevitable rise.  If one clings to the importance of the dominance of the West, this change of affairs may seem to be an unfortunate one indeed.  If one looks at the betterment of the balance of humanity, it could equally be a cause for celebration.

As a voter in the United States, I take full responsibility for bringing down western civilization.  Seriously though Ron is doing what he does best, foster discussion.  I can only imagine “in the round” we’ll be discussing the above and much more.   One thing that is for sure, I’ll be presenting a technical session on “Enabling the GeoWeb with Small Organizations” (at the same time as Peter Batty and Xavier Lopez of Oracle).

I’m interested in seeing how the conference shapes up after Where 2.0 2009 being so much smaller than in previous years.  The ESRI UC seemed to show that some conferences are still going strong and this could be an indicator as to the GeoWeb Conference’s position in the geospatial conference pecking order.  I’m doing my part by going.

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ESRI Plenary Session Videos

July 20, 2009 1 Comment

ESRI has posted the video from the Plenary Sessions and broken them up into sections for viewing.  You can’t link to each one, but you can access them here.

http://www.esri.com/events/uc/agenda/plenary.html

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ESRI RESTful API 9.4

July 19, 2009 1 Comment

I didn’t get as much time to talk with ESRI about the RESTful API, but I did two things answered that were bothering me.

  • You will be able edit with the RESTful API.  Opens up the ability to edit ESRI Geodatabases with just about any client you can imagine.
  • You will be able to query and work with other tables in the geodatabase (tables don’t need to be joined to query them).  I always seem to have lots of related tables in my projects so this should lessen the need to roll my own ASP.NET connector to work with tables.

Bonus news is that the ESRI JavaScript API will support HTML 5 for some really slick web applications.  Of course this is all based on ArcGIS 9.4 which should roll into our hands the first half of 2010.

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ESRI ArcGIS 9.4 Reports Updates

July 15, 2009 22 Comments

The Plenary the other day didn’t get too deep into new features of 9.4, but I was lucky enough to learn more about report creation in the ArcGIS 9.4 release:

1. There is no Crystal Report Wizard in ArcGIS, the only means for creating a report is based on our new reporting engine.
2. The Wizard is entirely new and includes options for the layout (default positioning of groups, summary stats, records, header, footer) and style of the report.
3. Styles (templates as you call them) are new at 9.4, and you have the ability to create custom styles.  Much easier to create a professional looking report.
4. There is a Report Designer, where you can easily and interactively design the look and feel of the report layout; easily place graphics and other elements on the report.
5. You can export the report out to more formats, including html, xls, pdf to name a few.
6. The new reporting tools are a complete upgrade in terms of performance and usability.  They are simply easy to work with; as one would expect.
7. The biggest improvement in functionality is the ability to load/run a report.  At 9.3.1 every report you created was static, you could not open it up to edit it or generate the same report with updated attributes or selections.  At 9.4, you can load or run an existing report to make changes or see the changes within your data without having to start from scratch.

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